For the last couple years New York City has been gripped in a panic over bedbugs. I mean you would think it’s the second coming of the 1932 Cholera epidemic the way people talk about them. Yet here were hundreds if not a thousand people wildly intermingling old dirty pillows, ripping them apart and then traipsing through their innards. You’d think this would be the bedbug equivalent of a 1000 person orgy without a single prophylactic. No one seemed concerned, but mark my words if the bedbug thing explodes in the next few months you can be damn sure it’ll be traced back to this.

We don’t need to wait. You can be sure that a pillow fight in Union Square would surely have included people who had bed bugs in their pillows and not a clue.

Numbers won’t spike significantly due to this, since they’re already very high. But people will be bringing bed bugs to these parties. Some will doubtless bring them home– after all that fun, I am sure taking steps to avoid bed bugs is the last thing on their minds.

I am sure anyone who’d consider participating in this would just think I was being paranoid or curmudgeonly, but I really don’t think this event is a good idea.

Nevertheless, it goes on: according to the World Pillow Fight Day website, the 2008 pillow fights in Toronto and Montreal are set to be held when the weather is warmer. San Francisco had theirs on Valentine’s Day: way to spread the bed bug love.